Florence

Step out of narrow Via dei Calzaiuoli and Brunelleschi's dome fills the sky, terracotta against blue, bigger than you expected. The Arno catches the late sun and turns the whole city amber. Under the Ponte Vecchio a busker plays Puccini while the streets smell of leather workshops and warm waffle cones.

Florence gave the Renaissance its start and remains Tuscany's capital, yet it still behaves like a workshop rather than a display case. Brunelleschi's dome over the cathedral remains the largest masonry dome ever built, its forty-five-metre span locked together by a herringbone brickwork he invented for the job. The Uffizi hangs Botticelli, Leonardo and Caravaggio in offices Vasari raised for the Medici, whose three centuries of patronage paid for most of what the galleries now hold. Across the river, the Oltrarno keeps street-level bookbinders, gilders and mosaic restorers working techniques the fifteenth century would recognise.